New price order?

Originally Posted by WingedWolf

A handful of snakes this year--my babies were all still growing up! Actually, we produced 26 hatchlings, from one male and 3 females. The male was an ordinary pastel--he has browned out more since we got him, but he's still handsome, and some of his babies aren't too bad. We probably won't be breeding him again, though. Next year I will be producing probably around 80 to 100 hatchlings. I would call that a bit more than handful, personally.

It will be around 200 the year after that...and 300 to 400 the year after that.

I call this a business because it is. I have registered it as a business, and I have a long-term plan for it as a business. Things are going extremely well thus far, and I'm quite optimistic.

Twenty six out of three and you say it so casually! That has to be some sort of a record even for well-known breeders!

Oh, no---we're well aware of how amazing it was. We have a really big normal female, and she laid THIRTEEN perfect, fertile eggs. Our other girl dropped 7--all fertile, and the other 9 with 3 infertile.

We are well aware the odds-gods favored us...especially when 11 of that clutch of 13 hatched out pastel. ^_^

We aren't figuring on such insane odds in our projections, lol.

I don't think the ball market will EVER resemble the leo market. Leopard geckos grow up far too fast, and are far too prolific. The 3 years it takes a female ball to reach adulthood keep the market from turning over crazily the way that one does.

Originally Posted by WingedWolf

Leopard geckos grow up far too fast, and are far too prolific.

I wouldn't say prolific. I've never had a Leo have more then 3 successful clutches (1-2 eggs a clutch) in a single year. My Cornsnakes on the other hand have given me 13-23 eggs in a first clutch and then can go on to double clutch without any encouragement.

Originally Posted by WingedWolf

Jaye, and Seamus, are you saying there are lines of ball pythons out there which aren't closely related (inbreeding generally being a bad idea) and will throw consistant offspring right now?

Yes and no. Ball pythons as a species display a great deal of phenotypical elasticity, with a high degree of variability in terms of pattern and tone falling well within the normal range for the species. That aspect of variability is going to be inherent in any pairing and add an element of random chance to the development of any offspring. However, ball pythons in the wild often tend to display some of those more variable tendencies of color and pattern as being common to a localized population. Not to the same degree that insular locales of other species will, since there are few signifigant geographical barriers... but as tendencies. Some of the things which are currently being sold as codominant and incompletely dominant genetic traits or many of the "minor morphs" are really just expressions of these genetic tendencies within populations that have experienced natural selection as a response to very slightly different environmental pressures. So selectively breeding with the idea of enhancing a particular tendency is certainly an attainable goal, even if it's not a trait which is as easily genetically mapped or predicted as a simple recessive.

Also... this thread is in the general business discussions and there are more than just ball pythons out there.

I mean, like I said, I know NERD has developed some high yellow normals, and I'd like to get my hands on some of those, but as far as I can tell, most people breeding base morphs are breeding them to normals.

For some traits which are expressed as absolutes, the future expression of that trait won't be negatively impacted if it's bred into stock which does not initially share it. Many of the pattern and color traits seen in the species are not absolutes though- there can be a great deal of visual difference between exceptional specimins that have been carefully propogated to maximize the quality of those traits and low grade stock that was bred without any thought given to selection. For a specific example, I believe you personally work with pastels- compare your stock, produced with your cavalier attitude towards selectively breeding to the quality stock from a breeder who took the time to emphasize the trait. Your animals can barely be distinguished from the WC normals found in every Petco across the country. Theirs are clearly something special.

Often to CH or CBB normals with unknown lineages. Those normals may LOOK like a fantastic match, but you won't know what you have until the babies hatch. And those babies won't be any more consistant in what they're likely to throw than their mother was. It takes at least a few generations to get a 'look' to turn up CONSISTANTLY.

Ah, I see... because it's time consuming, it's not worth doing. Consistant results won't happen immediately, although the more selective a breeder is in choosing their stock, the quicker those results will be acchieved.

You can't just throw a great mojave with a nice light tan normal snake and expect all the babies to be pretty like your mojave. And keeping the prettiest of those snakes doesn't mean the next generation will all be pretty either, particularly if you don't pair them up with their dad.

[sarcasm]Thank goodness you were here to explain that example to me. Because I have never, ever bred an animal in my life and you have just decades and decades of exhaustive experience piled ontop of a comprehensive education.[/sarcasm]

There was an episode of the Cosby show where the youngest daughter Rudy wanted to drop out of school. Bill asked her what she would do for a career with a third grade education. She replied that she would teach second grade. Ah those whacky Huxtable kids.

It takes quite a while, and with a small collection, it's going to be VERY difficult to get a consistant look going without tons of inbreeding. You need to be working with at least 3 different lineages of the same 'look' you're going for, and then you have to hold back the offspring to be sure of what they look like as adults. You're going to need a lot of snakes if you do it right.

Again you seem to be arguing that it's not worth doing because it takes effort and attention. That kind of thinking is not something that you should be spreading around. If you want to produce garbage animals as fast as possible, keep it to yourself so the rest of us don't have to re-educate anyone who didn't know enough to ignore you.

I'm aware that we have 'just pastels' this year. We did produce a few decent animals from those pairings, though, but of course the last ones to sell aren't the best ones. I hardly think that's relevent to this--as I explained, we had one male to pick from last season, our very first. We could have chose to breed nothing at all, but I'm happy enough with the results from choosing to do so, and we have kept 4 pastel females to hold back, picks of the litters so to speak. I'm intrigued to see what will happen when you mix cinnamon with high-yellow pastels as compared with mixing it with the pastels that are more brown. My guess is you will get two very different looks in the resulting pewters. In any case, again, not relevent.

I did not once say, or imply, that selective breeding was NOT WORTH DOING for a small hobbyist. What I said was that it would take a ferociously long time, and would be exceptionally HARD for a small hobbyist to do properly, without excessive inbreeding. I think a minimum number of snakes have to be involved to it the right way, and that MAY be more in some cases than the average hobbyist is willing to keep.

Selective breeding in general is going to take a long time. I don't think that there are any supportable reasons for attacking newcomers for not doing selective breeding when they haven't even been breeding for a full generation yet...that's kinda silly. How do you know they aren't doing selective breeding? You have to start with something first.
We had high hopes that our huge high-gold female would improve the pastel line we had. Instead, all but one of the best looking babies were produced by our other two females. We're not going to find that out by not trying it. Now we know more about what to expect from 3 of our girls.

You have no cause to attack me for what you THINK I am doing, Seamus--it was quite uncalled for. You should ask what I am actually doing. There shouldn't be anything personal in this thread, it's about pricing in the herp markets.

It's true that leos don't have any more offspring per season than ball pythons, but those offspring grow to adulthood much faster, so the generation turnover is pretty brisk. A price dip that takes the ball python market 3 years to go through only takes the leo market one year. That's what leads some people to impatience--which I consider to be a far more serious problem than selective breeding issues. I went to a show yesterday, and one guy had an adult ball python female. 2 other tables had animals they claimed were adults, but all of them were around 800-1100 grams. Now, how on earth does an 800 gram female qualify as an adult?! I asked one of those vendors if he had any larger females, and he tried to convince me that it was just fine to breed an 1100 gram ball pythons, because 'in the wild, they sometimes breed at 600 grams!'. >.< Then I got a line about how no in their right mind would EVER EVER let a female over 2000 grams go, and I would never find anyone selling them. <lol>

My roomate talked to someone bragging how he bred his 1000 gram female pin to a bumblebee. Roomate rightly asked if he was trying to kill her--and this guy replies that he does not CARE, so long as he gets a spinner blast from her.

Selective breeding takes a long time to show progress, but breeding animals too young is a lot more immediately obvious--greed over the welfare of the animals. That just makes me mad.
I mean, it may take a person quite a while to make sure their animals are super-pretty, but they can control from the outset whether or not they are HEALTHY.

It takes going to a show to really reveal where the problems are. I got to see people selling hatchlings that were 3 inches from death's door, because they had clearly never eaten in their lives, and were probably 2 months old. Part of the whole 'just normals' mentality. I don't understand how someone can put an animal like that on the table and try to SELL it to someone.

Call me strange, but I don't consider any living animal to be GARBAGE. And I don't stand for treating them like they are.

It's true that leos don't have any more offspring per season than ball pythons

Say what? I get an average of 8-10 clutches a year from my girls, that's 16-20 babies per season. Their first seasons are usually less productive but normally from there until they are about 5 or 6 years old they produce really well. How long did you breed leopard geckos?

I'm just curious....When did "Size" equal "adulthood"? People can make a Boid snake LOOK like an adult as far as size goes, but adulthood comes with maturity. Maturity comes with age. You can't determine if a snake is an adult by size alone.

Originally Posted by crotalusadamanteus

I'm just curious....When did "Size" equal "adulthood"?

I could go so many places with that.....

Size AND age combined = maturity. And no argument is going to make me think it's ok to breed an 800 gram female.
I don't think it's right to breed large 2 year olds, either. I think the snake should be at least 3.
Boys, sure--a year old is fine if they're eating great, and are over 500 grams. But people breed these girls too young and too tiny, and then wonder why they always get 3 egg clutches from them.

Kelli, I bred leopard geckos for a couple of years. I wouldn't have my females laying that many clutches, I feel it's too hard on them. One female would produce 3 or 4 pairs of eggs, and then I would adjust the temps and light, move the male, and shut them down for the season. I had one female try to keep on going, I had a heck of a time getting her to quit laying...she just wasn't responding to the lighting changes, and wound up laying 7 clutches. That female wound up doing poorly in the long run.

But that just illustrates my point--people CAN produce a lot more leos in a year than they can generally produce ball pythons, and in a lot less space. And then those babies only take about a year to grow up. That's the reason the leo market is so much more volatile.

The more you talk Donna the more you show exactly how much you do not know.

Oh and by the way.... I have bred many large two year olds. Never had a clutch under 6 eggs from any of them. Maybe you should try educating yourself a bit more on the subject of reproduction.